A letter to the Department of Justice from the Ferguson City Council indicates that the inability of citizens to review the cost of a federal monitor and proposed reforms are hindering an agreement between the city and federal agency.

Negotiations between the two parties began months ago, shortly after the Justice Department denounced Ferguson’s police and municipal court for constitutional violations and predatory policing after an investigation following the protests over the 2014 Michael Brown shooting.

The letter says the city objects to a DOJ deadline that passed Dec. 8, contending that city needs time to make residents aware of the cost of a federal monitor, which is projected at $350,000 the first year and $225,000 yearly afterward.

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“The citizens of Ferguson must bear some responsibility to make community policing and other programs work and must pay all of the cost associated with the agreement,” the letter, dated Dec. 4, says. “They are entitled to know how the agreement and the associated costs will affect their families, their financial situation, the services they receive from the city and the overall outlook of the city.”

Despite the letter, signs of progress in the negotiations have surfaced over the past week.

Emily Davis, a member of a group called the Ferguson Collaborative, said that DOJ officials met with the group Wednesday, advising it that Ferguson’s reluctance to approve an agreement may be softening and that a settlement could be reached within days.

Last week, the collaborative sent letters to city officials requesting that as part of the agreement police undergo recurring training on nonbias and nonprofiling practices and adopt robust community policing program — the top two concerns that came out of the group’s survey of 400 residents earlier this year.

As a part of its response to the collaborative, the city also drafted the letter to the DOJ, which noted that while it disagreed with some of the collaborative’s points, citizens “must have a fair opportunity to share their thoughts prior to any agreement being signed.”

Ferguson released the letter Monday in response to request from St. Louis Post-Dispatch under the state’s open records law.

A spokeswoman for the DOJ said in a statement: “The Justice Department continues to engage with the community on the issues addressed in our investigation. While we cannot comment on the content of negotiations, the talks with the City of Ferguson to develop a monitored consent decree have been productive. The department believes that in order to remedy the Justice Department’s findings an agreement needs to be reached without delay.”

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Mayor James Knowles III last week said, “Negotiations are still ongoing.”

After the Brown shooting, the DOJ spent months investigating the patterns and practices of the Ferguson Police Department, and, in a 102-page report released in March, accused the city of running a municipal court that ignored defendants’ rights in the interest of raising revenue.

The report said that the city used its police officers as collection agents and issued a staggering number of arrest warrants — a tactic that disproportionately affected African-Americans.

For months, a committee made of up Knowles and city council members Mark Byrne and Wesley Bell has been privately negotiating with the DOJ on a package of reforms. Byrne and Bell did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment.

The absence of information has bred rumors and frustrations, as both protesters and the city’s supporters clamor for more details.

“That’s been a consistent theme from all the residents is that we want the city to tell us what they are going to agree to,” said resident Blake Ashby, who oversees a website soliciting donations for the city’s legal expenses. “We want to understand how it’s appropriate to what we have been accused of and how it fits in our budget.”

At a City Council meeting in October, a resident told the council that, despite the city’s claims to the contrary, the DOJ had informed her and others that Ferguson could disclose a draft of an agreement.

Davis said DOJ representatives initially told her group that the city was free to release a draft of a proposed agreement. But after further discussions with the city, the agency concluded that doing so could harm negotiations, Davis said.

Knowles said that many don’t understand that Ferguson has been implementing reforms since Brown’s shooting 16 months ago, including the formation of a citizens’ police review board, improvements to the court and a community policing program.

“If we get to an agreement with the DOJ, the majority of the things that we agree to are not going be a surprise to anybody,” Knowles said. “People act like: ‘Oh my God what’s going to be in it?’ … A lot of this is the things that we have been doing.”

Throughout the process, the city has gathered public input in a variety of forums, Knowles said, but because the dialogue with the DOJ involves a legal contract, Ferguson has been prohibited from disclosing the discussions.

Still, the city has always maintained that residents would have to review any agreement before it’s approved, and that hasn’t changed, Knowles said.

“We still want people to see what the final product would be before we sign anything,” he said.

Knowles also predicted that the city would be under the $500,000 budgeted for legal expenses associated with the negotiations. The city retained litigator Dan K. Webb at an hourly rate of $1,335, plus other expenses.

Davis disputed that city had effectively solicited public opinion, especially from those who suffered the most under the abuses described in the DOJ report.

“They’ll say over and over that they have held these meetings to engage the community,” Davis said. “Those meetings have been very few and far between … They have never, ever effectively outreached to the people who have been most affected by the predatory policing in Ferguson.”

As far as the objections outlined in correspondence to the DOJ, Davis said that the city “just wanted to throw the cost of the monitor out there so that the citizens would reject the idea of paying for this.”

Still, Davis said she left the meeting with DOJ attorneys Wednesday feeling hopeful and was eager for a resolution.

“If they are really and truly on the verge of an agreement, and they are backing down off this, I want it to happen,” Davis said. “The moment it gets filed in court it is binding on the city of Ferguson.”